Simon Willard Clocks - Early Life

Early Life

Simon Willard was of the fifth Willard generation in America. The original Willard family had arrived in 1634 from Kent (England), and they were among the founders of Concord, Massachusetts. Simon Willard's parents were Benjamin Willard and Sarah Brooks, who were Grafton natives. Like all Willard brothers, Simon was born on the family farm, in Grafton, on April 3, 1753. He was the second son; his brothers were Benjamin, Aaron, and Ephraim.

The farm, now operated as the Willard House and Clock Museum, had been built in 1718, by the Willards' third American generation. When Simon Willard was born, the house had just one room. The elder brother Benjamin, who was 10 years older than Simon, learned horology and opened a workshop adjacent to the house in 1766. It is presumed that the other Willard brothers were taught horology by Benjamin.

At age 11 Simon began to study horology, showing some inherent ability for it. A year later, senior Benjamin hired the Englishman Mr. Morris, who would teach horology particularly to Simon. Years afterward, Simon revealed that Morris didn't know much on the matter and his brother Benjamin had been his actual mentor. Just after another year, Simon built his first tall clock.

Like some other contemporary horologists, the Willards divided their lives between farm chores and the clock business. The horology became profitable, and Benjamin got a workshop at Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1767. Simon Willard managed his own business in Grafton; nowadays some clocks survive, reading "Simon Willard, Grafton."

At his workshop in Grafton, Willard studied the clocks which were repaired by him. He experimented intensively, to reduce those timepieces' parts which did the driving and the regulation. The smallest clock was the bracket clock, and Simon invented his gallery clock (which was patented later in 1802) copying this design. The next creation of Simon was the shelf clock, which was based on the gallery clock model.